Wagaye Bahiru Abegaz* and Endalew Assefa Abera
North-Eastern Ethiopia is one of the sensitive regions to climate variation particularly to temperature and rainfall changes. Rainfall and temperature are one of the most determinant climate patterns for the study area because more than 80% of the area’s agriculture is reliant on rain-fed. The main aim of this study was to investigate trends in temperature and rainfall in the annual, seasonal and monthly time scale at Kombolcha and Dessie Meteorological stations. The daily rainfall and temperature data were collected from National Meteorological Agency of Ethiopia. The Mann-Kendall test and Sen’s slope estimator were used to assess rainfall and temperature trends. The Mann- Kendall test revealed that a non-significant decreasing rainfall trend was observed during February to March and September at Kombolcha and during January to March and September at Dessie stations. The rainfall trends showed decreasing in belg while increasing in both kiremt and bega season at both stations. However; the detected trends are non-significant. Both maximum and minimum temperature revealed that statistically significant decreasing trends in annual and seasonal time scale at Dessie station while at Kombolcha station a significant increasing trend of maximum temperature was observed at both annual and seasonal time scale. On the other hand a non-significant warming trend of minimum temperature was observed during annual and kiremt time scale but a non-significant decreasing trend was experienced during bega and belg season at Kombolcha station. Increase in temperature and decrease in amount of rainfall may have a negative impact on crop production and soil water balance. Therefore, this study could have an important role in identifying possible present and future production strategies.
